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Marjorie Strider
Marjorie Strider.jpg
Marjorie Strider, photograph by Fred W. McDarrah
Born
Marjorie Virginia Strider

(1931-01-26)January 26, 1931
Guthrie, Oklahoma
Died August 27, 2014(2014-08-27) (aged 83)
Nationality American
Education Kansas City Art Institute, Oklahoma State University
Known for Painting, Sculpture, Performance art
Movement Pop Art, avant-garde
Spouse(s)
Michael Kirby
(m. 1960⁠–⁠1969)

Marjorie Virginia Strider (January 26, 1931 – August 27, 2014) was an American painter, sculptor and performance artist best known for her three-dimensional paintings and site-specific soft sculpture installations.

Biography

Born in 1931 in Guthrie, Oklahoma, Strider studied art at the Kansas City Art Institute before moving to New York City in the early 1960s. Strider's three-dimensional paintings of beach girls with "built out" curves were prominently featured in the Pace Gallery's 1964 "International Girlie Show" alongside other "pin-up"-inspired pop art by Rosalyn Drexler, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, and Tom Wesselmann. Strider had two subsequent solo exhibitions at the Pace Gallery in 1965 and 1966 where she continued to show her voluminous paintings of bikini-clad girls as well as 3-D renderings of vegetables, fruits, flowers, clouds and other natural phenomena.

Strider became a core member of the 1960s avant-garde. She performed in happenings organized by Allan Kaprow, Claes Oldenburg and others. In 1969 she organized with Hannah Weiner and John Perreault the first Street Work, an informal public art event. Twenty artists participated including Vito Acconci, Gregory Battcock and Arakawa. Strider's contribution was thirty empty picture frames which she hung in random locations in Midtown Manhattan in the hopes of getting pedestrians to look at their environment differently. Strider married Michael Kirby, a contemporary artist and writer who published the first book on happenings in 1965.

Strider redirected her artistic focus from hard sculptural paintings to soft sculpture in the 1970s. She made site-specific installations of unbridled polyurethane foam that tumbled out of windows (Building Work 1976, PS1) or oozed down a spiral staircase (Blue Sky 1976, Clocktower Gallery). At times her renegade pours incorporated domestic objects (brooms, groceries, teapots), while others remained totally amorphous. These works are similar in style and intent to Lynda Benglis' floor paintings and soft sculptures of the same era.

From 1982 to 1985, a retrospective of her work toured museums and universities across the United States. Venues included: SculptureCenter, New York; Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, South Carolina; Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska; Museum of Art, University of Arizona, Tucson; and the McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas. In the 1990s, she began to make paintings with tactile surfaces that were more Abstract Expressionist than Pop. In 2009 she revisited her original girlie theme, painting new examples which she exhibited at the Bridge Gallery, New York.

Marjorie Strider died at her home in Saugerties, New York, on August 27, 2014.

Public collections

Selected exhibitions

  • 2011 Hollis Taggart Galleries, New York, "Marjorie Strider" [solo exhibition] (catalogue)
  • 1999 Neuberger Museum of Art, SUNY Purchase (catalogue)
  • 1995 Andre Zarre Gallery, New York, "Recent Paintings”
  • 1988–90 Finn Square, New York, "Sunflower Plaza," outdoor installation
  • 1984 Bernice Steinbaum Gallery, New York, "Wall Sculpture and Drawings”
  • 1982 Myers Fine Art Gallery, SUNY Plattsburgh, "Marjorie Strider: 10 Years, 1970–1980" [traveling exhibition through 1985] (catalogue)
  • 1976 The Clocktower, New York
  • 1976 PS1, New York
  • 1974 Weatherspoon Art Gallery, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, "Strider: Sculpture and Drawings 1972–1974" (brochure)
  • 1966 Pace Gallery, New York
  • 1965 Pace Gallery, New York
  • 1964 Pace Gallery, New York, "First International Girlie Exhibit"
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